Certain image based navigation systems extract features from images acquired from an image sensor and match the features to a map representing the environment through which the navigation system travels. The image based navigation system estimates the vehicles position, velocity and attitude based on the matching of the features in the image to similar features within the map. Frequently, the a-priori map data and the image data represent an environment having many different identifiable features. In certain implementations, matching the many different identifiable features using a 2-D matching algorithm may lead to an incorrect feature match and degrade the navigation solution. Thus, a problem exists in how to perform 3-D feature extraction and matching that is not as computationally expensive while still maintaining accurate feature matching.